


The Black Sea

by macneiceisms



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 21:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macneiceisms/pseuds/macneiceisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River contemplates ghosts on Serenity.</p><p>Post-Miranda drabble, River-centric. This was something I was considering developing further, but I decided to leave it the way it was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Black Sea

The bridge was twittering softly. Serenity’s dials and screens glowed, sometimes chirping, sometimes a dial dimming and flashing again. _She wants you to adjust the left thruster some,_ whispered Wash from her right. _She’s gonna start hurting if she does this way, and then Kaylee will kill me for frying her engine. Right, right. Dead. I keep forgetting._ She didn’t like looking over there to that seat, all red. Wash didn’t look better in red. _Zoe liked me in all the colors of the rainbow._ River did as was told, and fiddled with the input so _Serenity’s_ thruster wasn’t rattling so much with overburn. Just a touch, like Wash would have done. Her hands were littler, better on the dials, but _Serenity_ missed Wash’s voice. River did too – his real voice and not just his chatty ghost.

The Cortex clock read 100, and the clock set for Persephone said 1600, but her eyes wouldn’t grow heavy no matter how long she gazed out into the pinprick blackness of space. Sometimes even the black could not soothe her, and that left to her only late night plies and leg lifts, pirouetting until she was so tired her eyes crossed. _Me too, my girl. But I had Zoe to come back to when I got a’remembering._ River checked the trajectory once more, said goodnight to the dinosaurs, and locked the bridge behind her.

“Night, Wash,” she whispered. “Night _Serenity_.” The night cycle light was on in the mess, and as River padded silently in her leather slippers across the grating, her heart started to hurt. A squeeze here, a prick here. _Did I make the right choice?_ Prick, went her heart; like a needle burying between the bones of her ribs. _I hate him, I hate him._ When she reached the mess, it was only Inara, sitting at the table with a cup of tea. “Sweet cinnamon.”

“Oh!” started Inara, “River, mei mei, I thought you were asleep. Did I wake you?”

The thoughts were gone, nothing but a wisp left like the steam curling from her tea. Her brown eyes were a little red rimmed, her hair unbraided.

“Thank you. All the walls are mal for the captain, mieux for me. He’s not a psychic.”

Inara laughed. It sounded worn. The captain was seething alone in his bunk. Served him right to be so orange and fizzy.

 “No, he isn’t.”

“You should tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

“Everything. The beginning, and the middle and the end.”

“Mei mei…” The picture of Zoe placing a candle on Wash’s cairn flicked through Inara’s mind, gone as soon as it came.

“Zoe is not the bad example. Wrong assessment. Ask Wash.”

“Wash is gone.”

“He still has things to say. Tells me what Serenity’s brain wants, tells me when she’s hurting before I know. Tells me when Zoe needs to talk to him alone. She would say the same thing he does. Zoe has a very chatty ghost.”

 “It’s not so easy.”

“No. It’s very hard. Because he hurts you and he shouldn’t hurt you. A wounded animal, limping.  Knows it’s savaging its owner but can’t stop because he’s bleeding.” Inara poured her a cup of tea. It was perfect and warm when she sipped it, star anise and cinnamon cloves. River scrunched her nose and giggled. “Like you. Sweet and bitter and good for the heart. Thank you.”

“Were you going to bed or to dance?”

“To dance.”

“Hard time sleeping tonight?”

“Chatty ghosts,” said River. “Chatty thoughts. Everyone but Jayne. His are quiet and smooth.”

“Not gunshots and whores?” said Inara with a smile.

“Sometimes. But sometimes Preacher Book, and home. He says things about symbols, about truth and goodness too. Just bits floating around. Soft bits. Quiet bits.” She closed her eyes hard, and brought herself back. She’d been wandering around a little.

“I guess we’ve all been praying a lot more.”

“Prayer is like love. Keeps her in the sky.”

“Book did say something like that once, didn’t he?”

“It’s not about god,” she growled out, remembering well how he sounded, or at least, how he’d sounded to Jayne. “It’s about faith. Believing that love without reward is worth it.”

“That’s the one,” Inara smiled, her feelings cooling into a soft green. She stood and took her tea away, kissing River’s hair before she left. “Sleep quietly, mei mei.”

“Zoe wants to talk about her chatty ghost.”

Inara looked at her a while, before nodding and floating back to her shuttle. There was nothing left but the whisper of her velvet robe upon the grating and the scent of cloves where she’d once sat. One day that would be gone too, and she’d have Inara’s ghost to talk to as well.

_Heaven and hell, I’d wager._

“Book.”

_Yeah, child. You took some words to heart, I see._

“Not on purpose.” She couldn’t help but smile. River closed her eyes and reached out across the table with an open palm. The shepherd’s fingers touched her hand.

_That’s the power of words. We can’t keep from hearing them, even if them ears are trying their hardest to be deaf ones._

“My ears are never deaf.”

_Jayne said you heard everything; felt everything. That kind of thing wears on a soul. I prayed for you. A lot, I might say._

“I heard them, even if god didn’t. Everyone’s got secrets.”

“Who you talkin’ to, girlie?”

She’d smelled him before she’d heard him. Sweaty and dirty and musky. With a damp towel flung over his shoulder, he rubbed as much grime as he could from a mug and filled it with cold water.

“The shepherd.”

“Didn’t think dead men made for lively conversation.”

He downed the water in loud, uncouth gulps, the knot of his throat going up and down and glittering with sweat. He’d stopped trimming his beard into shape, and now it was just short dark stubble all about his jaw. It bothered her.

“Wash has gone to bed now, with Zoe. Simon and Kaylee are asleep too.” She wrinkled her nose. “Kaylee made him tired.”

Jayne laughed and wiped his beard with his arm. He set the mug down loudly in the sink and left it, which would make Mal angry in the morning.

“Your lil dancey shoes are on the rack, behind them crates of flour and meal. Captain nearly tossed em out while as moving things around the hold.”

“You kept them for me.”

He shrugged. “Seemed like the thing to do.”

He went to his bunk, leaving the smell of sweat and Inara’s tea.


End file.
